


Song Without Words

by GloriaMundi



Category: Riddle-Master Trilogy - McKillip
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Gift Fic, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-01
Updated: 2009-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Only when the Morgol came out into the courtyard to meet him did Deth learn, from his own heart's leap, that he had kept a secret even from himself." Three riddles; four seasons; a song without words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song Without Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancarett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancarett/gifts).



**Winter**

The High One's harpist rode to the City of Circles at midwinter to meet the new Morgol. It was a fine morning, warm for the season, and he was disinclined to hurry. His horse, a sweet-tempered Herun mare, picked her way carefully through the marsh, needing no more than his hand on the reins to guide her. He knew the way by now: he had come to Herun year on year. And he _knew_ the way, every lucent pool, every mirrored patch of sky that hid treacherous slow depths, every blackened stump and sudden standing stone.

If any asked how he had found his way unerringly through the maze of marsh, he would tell them of Tirunedeth, harpist of the Morgol Cron, who had taught him the songs of Herun; who had guided him through the marsh time and again; who had given him his name, Deth.

He had loved Tirunedeth, had found joy in the other's presence: had all but forgotten, for a while, how many others he had loved through the long centuries. Each loved one's death had sunk into his heart like a bright pebble falling slowly down through peat-brown water, dead leaves, silt, into the silent darkness. He mourned them all, when he remembered.

Some days, for mercy, the weight of memory and time -- of who and what he was -- lay more lightly upon him, and he found joy and grace in the moment. Today was such a day. The winter morning glowed with jewels, bright berries on the bushes and the dazzle of winter sunshine catching quartz and mica in the stones that rose from the mere. Ice rimed the ivy that entwined a dead willow; frozen dewdrops gemmed a cobweb that clung, briefly, to the mare's mane. Banners of mist rolled slowly over tussocked grass and rich earth. Above him, the sky was pure blue, and the sun bright as summer. Emerging from a spinney of willow and thorn, he saw stone houses, a village, off to the west. A palisade of smoky mountains guarded the green plain; a circle of red stones ringed the city and the black house at its heart; and a white road, winding between houses and hills, brought a party of riders towards him.

Deth let the mare have her head, and she paced slowly towards the other horses. The riders' coats were bright in the sunshine, orange and green and red and blue: fine embroidered scarves floated around them as they rode, and jewels glinted on their harness. Deth heard their laughter, like birdsong in the cold crisp air.

"I am Elrhiarhodan, the Morgol of Herun," said the foremost of the riders, reining her horse. Behind her, her guard -- young men and women, not the seasoned warriors with whom Heulinudru had surrounded himself -- halted, eyeing Deth curiously. "I bid you most welcome," said the Morgol. "I had word of your journey, and hoped you would arrive last night."

Deth had remembered Heulinudru's daughter Elrhiarhodan as a tall, slender child, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with fine clean features and a grave manner. Her eyes were gold now, as her father's had been before her: like her father's, he suspected, they sometimes saw too much.

"I was sorry to hear of your loss," he said, so that the first words he spoke to her would not be a lie. Then, "The High One has instructed me to express his sorrow at the death of Heulinudru."

"He had a long life, and a happy one," said the Morgol, bowing her head. "And his ending was swift and without pain." Her coin-coloured eyes studied Deth, and some perturbing thought passed like a cloud-shadow over her face, there and gone in a moment. "Come into my house, and let me give you rest and refreshment," she said. "A room has been prepared for you."

"Thank you," he said: it was more welcome, more readiness, than he'd had from many a Morgol. "You saw me cross the marsh? Or did the traders send word of my coming?"

"I see many things," said the Morgol, laughter in her voice. "The fall of a leaf, the bend of a bough. The progress of a silver-haired man with a harp on his back, riding a good Herun mare."

"It's said that you know many secrets," said Deth. It was like a challenge, like bait: tell me what you know of me.

"Some secrets are scarce worth the knowing," said the Morgol. "They matter most to those who keep them safe, never mind that they destroy their keepers." A sidelong look. "They say that you were born in Lungold, seven hundred years ago."

"That's no secret," said Deth. "Indeed, I think you heard it first from me, the winter before last: the snow was heavy, so I stayed here and harped for you and your father, and he asked for tales of his ancestors."

"So: you know the secrets of my family," said the Morgol. "But I know none of yours."

"There's nothing to tell," Deth lied. "I never knew my father: my mother was of no family."

The Morgol looked askance at him, a smile curving her mouth. "To whom did Maethe confide her secret?"

He had forgotten her talent for riddles: her quick mind. Though this riddle ...

"Maethe of Aum took a man named Aelo as her lover, and bore him a son, Heduen," he said, rediscovering the words as he spoke them. "Her husband thought the boy his own, and Maethe was consumed with guilt. She whispered her secret to an acorn, and buried it in the ground: and when the oak tree reached its full glory, those who lay in its shade heard the leaves whisper 'Heduen is Aelo's son.'"

"And the stricture?" said the Morgol, her eyes mischievous.

Deth thought a moment, discarding the obvious interpretation. "Sometimes a secret outlives its secrecy," he told her. "An oak grows for many years: by the time that Maethe's secret was told, her son would have been an old man, and his parentage of little interest to any."

"The stricture, according to the Masters at Caithnard, is: Truth will out," the Morgol informed him. "But I believe that I prefer your reading." Mischief still curled in the corner of her smile, crinkled the edges of her eyes. Deth, looking at her, remembered spring.

**Spring**

It was no hardship to break his journey in Herun: the King of Hel would not look for his arrival until the end of the month, and he'd had no reason to linger in Ymris while Meremont gathered another army for another futile siege of Caerweddin. The Morgol's house was warm and full of light, and he could harp and talk and let the tension drain from his bones after a long day's ride in relentless rain.

Only when the Morgol came out into the courtyard to meet him did Deth learn, from his own heart's leap, that he had kept a secret even from himself. To see her standing there, the rain beading on her elaborately-braided black hair, darkening the shoulders of the fine amber-coloured gown, was like learning the answer to a riddle he had never thought to ask.

"You are welcome, harpist," she said, and the words would have been coolly formal without her smile to warm them. "Come in out of the rain: the new wine is ready to drink, and I would like your opinion on some books I have acquired."

"Thank you, Morgol," said Deth, handing the mare's reins to an ostler: and would have said more, but the Morgol made a curious, abrupt gesture.

"Please call me El," she said. "Let there not be titles, or masks, or roles between us."

She led him into the airy, white-pillared hall. At one end of the room a fire blazed in its iron nest, scenting the air with apple-wood and spice. Scholars and soldiers were gathered at the long table, jugs of wine half-empty before them, books open, arguing amiably. Deth paused, but the Morgol -- El -- did not; she glanced back over her shoulder at him, and the look was invitation and encouragement both.

He followed the banner of that look through the citadel. El's back was straight beneath her robe, her hair a shining fall of night, her steps steady and unhurried. A thousand objections fizzed in Deth's mind, and he set himself to counter each one. She was young: but so were all who walked the realm now, compared to his own wandering years. She was the Morgol, and he the High One's harpist: but that was a mere mask he'd donned, a key to open doors, a small part of his whole self. She was beautiful, and he ...

When El turned to look at him, he saw himself reflected in her golden gaze; saw, too, that she found beauty in tarnished-silver hair, eyes the colour of midnight, the lean body he'd shaped for himself. That was his surface. What else did she see? _This woman can see through stone,_ he reminded himself. In the first Years of Settlement, El's ancestors had learnt to look through solid stone, to see Ymris armies massing beyond the mountains. (The Morgol of that time -- had it been Badaidereth, or Tyeodaistideu? -- had sent his men out to face a foe who were not yet in sight: Deth remembered the guards' protests.) And El's father Heulinudru had sometimes perceived more than he could recognise: he'd said, one night, that there were more years ringed in Deth's bones than in any man he'd met.

El's gaze was still upon him, but whatever she saw did not trouble her. The Morgols' sight tended to sharpen with age, however, and already he feared what she might discover in him. That was the objection he could not counter: she was perceptive, and he had too much to hide.

She poured wine for him herself, and rang a bell to summon servants who set shallow dishes of fish and vegetables before them both. While they ate they spoke of inconsequentialities, of riddles and answers, of the war in Ymris and the bad weather that had ruined the harvest in Hed. The King of Hel was to marry Efa of An, forging another bond between two of the Portions of An.

"You might stay here a while," El said, when Deth told her that he'd be harping at the wedding. "You would be very welcome to ... to stay. To make your home here. For a while." She was staring intently down at (through?) the edge of the table, as though Deth might otherwise see too much in her eyes; as though it were Deth who had the gift of sight.

"El ..." She was not a child, to be refused with a smile and a kind word. She was a grown woman, land-ruler of Herun, the maze of marshland and the standing stones and veiling mists all rooted in her blood and brain. And she could see through mountains, see his heart beat inside its cage of bone, and yet not see what he truly was.

The secrets, the knowledge, the lies: she deserved better than treachery. She deserved all and everything, and he could not give it to her.

"Elrhiarhodan," he said, and found himself helpless before her sudden smile. He mustered his thoughts. "What doom came to Ithe of Osterland?"

"Ithe of Osterland," said El, a small symmetrical crease between her winged brows, "was cursed by Har, that he would find murder and malice wherever he went. So he severed his own shadow, and gifted his name and his land to it, and sent it out into the world. And the shadow, which was Ithe, met murder and malice wherever he went, until at last he was slain on the doorstep of his own home. And meanwhile the man who had been Ithe wandered the world, with no name to tell anyone and nothing of his own. And the stricture is, you can't escape your fate: you can't escape who you are. But that's not --"

"I would not wish my doom on you, El: I would not wish my secrets to harm you."

"I would never harm you!"

"That is not," said Deth gently, "what I fear. Not you, but myself: my fate."

Myself, and what you will see within me, if I let you look.

**Summer**

In early summer Deth was in An, sitting beneath an oak tree with his harp on his knee while pigs foraged around him. The leaves did not whisper any secrets that he didn't already know. The delicate tracery of light and shadow became a fugue; the song of crickets wound itself into a high, clear melody that sank and resurfaced. The magic that slumbered restlessly beneath the earth was a rumbling bass; the bones of the unquiet dead were warped and woven into slow solace. Here in An (where a letter from El had awaited him in the King's hall at Anuin) the land-law was riddled with witchery, ready to erupt into fire and blood. Words would not bind it, but music might.

From An he travelled north through Hel to Ymris. The bright banners of the armies facing off before Caerweddin's walls made strong chords, like pillars supporting the song. One afternoon he spent on Wind Plain, where he'd been born (more years than any man should bear, more years than legend could tally), and found with his fingers on the harp-strings a merry dance that brought to life the stillness and the broken stones, and echoed the great city full of magic and laughter that had stood here then. The King of Ymris had greeted him with a letter, folded within a silken wrapper and closed with the seal of Herun. The letter made him laugh aloud, but he sent no reply.

He crossed to Hed, he played for the land-ruler, Aisty, and her children: but he did not play the unfinished song without words, though he wove the taste of Hed beer and the scent of ripening corn into the music. Flat farmland and the cry of curlews and meadowlarks; the sea teeming with silver fish; the silvery haze of a fine day dawning.

From Hed he took ship for Kraal. The long slow summer days, the dolphins that leapt in the bow-wave and the white birds circling above, all found their way into the song without words. He played very softly, drawing the song together, for this music was not for sharing, not entertainment for sailors and traders: besides, they were happiest with the reels and ballads he played for them at evening. And every day he read El's letters, drawing them from their hiding-place next to his heart and lingering over the words.

He sent no reply: for surely El was watching his wandering round the realm, watching him as he circled Herun without ever coming to rest there. Surely she saw him now as he rode up the road from the port at Kraal to Grim Mountain, to Har's house at Yrye. Perhaps she could hear the notes of the song he was constructing, from memory and pain, from hope and desire. There was snow, still, on the mountains that rose to the north of the river; the road along the bank was muddy, though the winter's rockfalls had been cleared aside so that traders and travellers could journey into Osterland. The silence of the mountains, the rush of the ice-cold, blue-watered river, echoed in his song. He could play that song here, with none to hear him.

Har met him at the gate of Yrye. The wolf-king had not changed: he had scarcely changed, it seemed, since the Years of Settlement, when men had come out of the west to the realm, and Deth himself -- though he had not yet borne that name -- had waited, welcomed, waited again. If any man could bear the weight of his secrets, it would be Har.

"I have been thinking of Maethe of Aum," said Har, when they had sat long hours without a word passing between them. Har had a gift for silence: it was a skill that Deth had taught himself.

"Maethe?" said Deth, quashing the warmth that rose in him at the thought of El reminding him of that same riddle, the first time that he had visited her as Morgol.

"You are burdened with secrets," said Har, his ice-blue eyes calm and compelling. "I do not know if they are yours, or the High One's. But are they worth severance from the world?"

"I can't simply cut them free and bid them make their own way," said Deth, more sharply than he'd intended. "I ... Like Ithe, who ... who was cursed," he flicked a glance up at Har, who had cursed Ithe to his death so long ago, "I would be left with nothing."

"Some names carry their own doom. Were you born with the name you bear?"

Deth shook his head, waiting for the question that must inevitably follow: but Har did not ask.

"I think," said the wolf-king at last, his voice quiet and definite as the distant sound of ice in autumn, "that there is more to you than secrets, harpist. And if you cannot cut yourself free from the secrets you carry, you may yet keep them from other eyes."

"The Morgol sees ..."

"The Morgol sees further than most," said Har. "She sees through stone; she sees through dark water to the bottom of the marsh, and she sees through the mists that hide Herun. Her focus falls upon what matters; what is true."

Deth left Osterland the next day. A company of traders had arrived as he was making his farewells: El's latest letter rested unopened inside Deth's coat. He rode slowly, following the road west towards Isig Mountain. On the horizon, at evening, loomed Erlenstar Mountain, where Ghisteslwchlohm -- founder of Lungold, wizard and riddle-master, usurper of the High One's throne -- waited, impatient, for his harpist's return with news of the realm. Deth did not turn towards Erlenstar. He threaded the borderland into his song: heady pine-scent, the green light angling through the branches above him, the hidden gleam of silver and rubies beneath the mountain.

Danan knew him well (had known him better, long ago, when he wore a wizard's shape): his green gaze held amusement as he handed Deth the letter that had arrived for him two days earlier.

"Herun, eh?"

"The Morgol is," began Deth, and the memory of what El was rose up within his heart. "The Morgol is a good correspondent," he said, lamely. "She sees much, and yearns to know more."

"My friend," said Danan gently, "I hope you won't be offended if I tell you that I'm reminded of Eolodru of Ymris."

"Eolodru?" said Deth, thinking: _I knew him, once._ "He was a prince of Ymris," he remembered aloud, "of whom it was prophesied that he would lose his greatest treasure when he least expected so to do. And he locked up his gold and his jewels, his hounds and his horses, his books and his harp, and they were safe, for only he could look upon them, and he held the only key. But one day a woman came to his door, and when he saw her he fell instantly in love, and his heart flew out of him and into her breast. My heart is here, Danan." He touched his breastbone. "I have my treasure still."

"Such a treasure must be freely given," said Danan equably, "if it's to keep its worth."

Deth found no words for a while: they sat silently, in the cool evening air, looking out over the mountainside. He could not say to Danan, "I have lived too long and seen too much, and the secrets I hold are not mine to share." He could not say, "I cannot love where I cannot give my whole heart." He did not say, "The High One sits in Erlenstar Mountain, and I would not give him a weapon against me."

"I will go to Herun," he said at last, "and give her my answer." I will give her my song, where I've hidden my heart.

**Epilogue: Autumn**

It's a rainy night when Deth comes to the City of Circles again, mist eddying around him, water splashing at his horse's hooves, his secrets falling away from him like stones into the marsh until he bears nothing but the harp on his back, the song in his head and a packet of letters against his heart.

The Morgol must know that he's here, but she does not greet him in person: she sends a steward to bid him welcome and show him to a large, light room, with rugs and hangings of gold, ivory, and rich brown, warm with firelight and the light of lamps. Deth bathes, and dons clean clothes, and trims his hair. He brushes a hand over his harp, ensuring its readiness for the lovely, lilting, laughing, haunting song that is his gift to Elrhiarhodan. The song has no words, because secrets are safe without words to bind them; the song has no name, because Deth has hidden his true name and his true self within every note, every chord, and any name he could give to that music would be a lie. He has made himself as limpid as a still pool, as tenuous as mist, as secret as a buried stone. All else that he is, is in the song.

And when El comes in at last, her back straight and braced for disappointment, he asks her, "What was the greatest treasure of Eolodru of Ymris?"

The light dawns in her golden eyes like sunrise.

 


End file.
